Greetings all,
A couple weeks ago I went out to Lodi, CA to shoot a wedding. There are a lot of photos here ... and I certainly don't expect anyone to comment on all of them! But if you wouldn't mind, I'd love to hear your overall thoughts.
If questions come up about the black and white choice, I'll answer, but wanted to get your thoughts first.
Thanks for looking! There are more on the blog if you're interested.
Haley

I dont think I can do a whole wedding with B&W. I usually do B&W when I know it is going to look good in B&W by just looking at it. I guess my B&W conversion skill isnt good because I can't do it on a lot of my images. They dont look good. Teach me the conversion!

I appreciate all of them, and I do hear ya on the last shot. I'm going to keep it, though. It was shot in the wee hours of the morning on a dirt road after 77 bottles of champagne (give or take). It's a memory. I totally get your point about it, though!

amonline, 40's in there because I liked the trees. That's it.

Scottam10, yes, definitely a lack of all those things you mentioned. Those weren't important to the bride and groom, and they're not things I usually blog, anyway, as they're not my forte. I will deliver them, though.

The lady in 33 gave me her explicit approval to post that shot. She likes it.

I appreciate all your comments! It's great to get an outside perspective on a set that I'm so closely tied to.

OH! I meant to comment for those who asked about my black and white conversions.

I use only LR4. Not PS. Basically, I set all saturation levels to 0 (NOT just using the saturation slider). Then I fiddle with the contrast until it feels right. Then I go into luminance. I generally tweak the reds, oranges, and yellows until they feel right. Clarity is usually +4. Black are generally -10 or so. I like me a nice contrasty black and white. I also scoot the white balance around until it feels right.

I'm not trying to be vague at ALL. This is seriously how I do it. It's not efficient, and it takes me probably thrice as long to process a wedding as it does for normal people. But that's how I do it. Some stuff deserves less contrast. Some more. Honestly, most of it is "feel" and not technique. I know shit about technique, but I can feel when a black and white conversion is headed for the crapper.

Hope that helps! I'm open to any questions, but please don't take it personally if I can't answer it!

HLPoulos wrote:
OH! I meant to comment for those who asked about my black and white conversions.

I use only LR4. Not PS. Basically, I set all saturation levels to 0 (NOT just using the saturation slider). Then I fiddle with the contrast until it feels right. Then I go into luminance. I generally tweak the reds, oranges, and yellows until they feel right. Clarity is usually +4. Black are generally -10 or so. I like me a nice contrasty black and white. I also scoot the white balance around until it feels right.

It's funny you mention this technique. I ran my son through his B&W module in Creative Photography about 10 days ago and we used this technique for his labs to demonstrate the different uses of filters. I liked the results so much, I've been doing it this way ever since. I'm currently tying in the VSCO stuff with my filter versions to give me better results over both contributions. I've stayed away from the clarity, and my blacks are usually bumped around -7 to -9. Still tweaking a new process, but it's interesting to find someone doing nearly the exact same thing. lol

Interesting, that's how I've been doing my b&w's recently as well. What exactly do you mean when you say " all saturation levels to 0 " ? Don't you just click the black and white button on top of white balance ?